That’s like saying, “I’ll make robing a bank more difficult but if you can rob a bank, keep the money. You deserve it for your hard work.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve has agreed to provide the insurance giant, the American International Group, with a loan of up to $37.8 billion, on top of one made to the troubled company last month.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09insure.html?hp

Since they and their Free Market boosterism are in part responsible for the current mess, they really have no cause for upset.

They don’t yet realize how marginalized they are about to become, the poor babies.

I’ll quit paying my mortgage this month, so I can qualify for this nifty-sounding program, after the election.

1. Outrageous CEO and senior executive compensation will not be stopped no matter how it creates extremely short term thinking and a divergence of executive interests versus those of long term investors.

2. Insane bonus schemes are perfectly fine. The more money the merrier no matter how this may increase risk taking on the part of executives.

3. Shareholders need not worry about supervising their investments. If the market truly goes under and their shares are becoming worthless, the government will step in and rescue them. Indeed, paying full purchase price of the failed mortgages actually values the reckless mortgage decisions above those of prudent investors by making them fully insured.

4. If you are average Joe, it is time to grab a crow bar or other weapons and start a holy uprising. It is the only way that you will ever see justice.

McCain could be trying to get at those easily impressionable independents in trying to equalize himself with Obama to sway their thinking. “There’s not much difference between the two, so I’ll vote for the white guy and keep tradition alive.”

Won’t work, but that’s what McCain’s handlers are telling him.

There appears to be plenty of blame to go around here — banks and mortgage companies made risky loans (often suckering people into borrowing more than they could afford to), and borrowers went for bigger mortgages than they could handle without knowing all the risks (or perhaps not caring).

It’s only fair then that each party be required to take some of the hit. Including the lenders.

And then we need some safeguards put into the system to prevent this kind of disaster from happening again. People should be able to understand mortgages when they enter that world — and not get all their education on the subject from the party that’s trying to lend them money. Banks should assume the risk when they make risky loans. And bankruptcy courts should be allowed to restructure mortgage debt just as they restructure other debt in bankruptcy cases.

These ideas aren’t mine. They’re on Obama’s website:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#home-ownership

And they’re simple common sense. I would imagine Obama isn’t the only one who has come up with them.